Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Katrina Queen Of The Desert

by digby

Atrios links to another lengthy part of this fascinating article but I think the lede is worth excerpting too. Before there was Katrina, there was the CPA:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O’Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What they needed to be was a member of the Republican Party.

O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation that sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq’s oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America’s viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated — and ultimately hobbled — by administration ideologues.

“We didn’t tap — and it should have started from the White House on down — just didn’t tap the right people to do this job,” said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA’s Washington office. “It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings.”

(Jim O’Beirne, by the way, is the husband of wingnut welfare queen Kate O’Beirne, naturally. There’s never more than one degree of separation between these taxpayer scam artists.)

The Republicans are telling us that they should be re-elected because the Democrats aren’t serious about national security and only they can be trusted to keep the terrorists from killing us in our beds.

But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don’t know if it’s possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.

Here’s the question for the American people. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that you don’t like Democrats. You have the vague feeling in the pit of your stomach that they just don’t have the cojones to do “what needs to be done.” You can’t get over the feeling that they aren’t serious enough.

But if you are a thoughtful person of any political persuasion who is concerned about national security or the economy, you simply cannot read that story above and have even the slightest faith that such people can be trusted to continue to run the government with no oversight.

The question is not whether the Democrats have a better plan to correct these grievous errors or whether they are hard enough to deal with hard issues. The question is how anyone could think Democrats could possibly be worse than an administration that ordered the US government to eschew all expertise and give billions of taxpayer dollars to inexperienced Republican functionaries to rebuild a foreign country from the ground up? Considering the stakes in all this, I don’t see how anyone can think it’s a good idea to let these people continue unchecked. They screw up everything they touch and they never, ever, learn from their mistakes.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone who isn’t a purely faith-based voter can read this story in the Washington Post and come away believing that the Republicans are capable of running any government, much less the government of the most powerful country in the world. They are like children playing Risk and Monopoly.

If anyone thinks that political considerations will keep people like this from making more huge, irrevocable, catastrophic strategic blunders are kidding themselves. They are capable of anything. That’s not hyperbole. Read the article and then bookmark it. We’re going to need it to send to journalists and members of the press over the next few weeks to remind them about GOP “seriousness.”

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First As Tragedy, Then As Farce Worse Tragedy

by tristero

Via Atrios via Josh comes this reminder that there really is something terribly wrong both with the leaders of the US for thinking like this and with the people in this country who let them get away with it:

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran’s nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran’s role in Hezbollah’s attack on Israel in mid-July. [Heard that one before.]

The struggle’s outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon [And the moon is made of green cheese.], but he hasn’t ruled out using military force.

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they’ve been told that plans for airstrikes – if Bush deems them necessary – are being updated. [To include nukes, I wonder?]

[snip]

The International Atomic Energy Agency complained in an unusual letter made public on Thursday that a House intelligence committee report on Iran contains “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information.”

A top official of the IAEA, which conducts nuclear inspections in Iran and elsewhere, wrote that the report exaggerated advances Tehran has made in enriching uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear arms if made pure enough. The official, Vilmos Cserveny, said the report also falsely claimed that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had removed an inspector from Iran for being too aggressive.

Cserveny’s letter was addressed to intelligence committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware said that the reference to weapons-grade uranium in the report was in a photo caption [where it would stand out like it was, heh, radioactive], but that the report makes clear elsewhere that Iran has not yet achieved that capability.

[Snip, in which the article asserts that most experts agree that Iran is, unlike Iraq, actively seeking nuclear weapons technology.]

The dispute was a virtual rerun of the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when ElBaradei and his agency questioned claims that Saddam Hussein was aggressively seeking nuclear weapons. Some top U.S. officials sought to discredit ElBaradei, although the IAEA’s assessment proved correct.

The IAEA’s written protest, dated Tuesday, was echoed privately by U.S. intelligence analysts, who saw the House report as an attempt to discredit the CIA and other agencies on Iran.

Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they’re concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Officials at all three agencies said they suspect that the dubious information may include claims that Iran directed Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, to kidnap two Israeli soldiers in July; that Iran’s nuclear program is moving faster than generally believed; and that the Iranian people are eager to join foreign efforts to overthrow their theocratic rulers.

The officials said there is no reliable intelligence to support any of those assertions and some that contradicts all three.

The officials said they fear a replay of the administration’s mishandling of what turned out to be bogus information from Iraqi exiles in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, documented earlier this month in a Senate intelligence committee report.

But they said this time, intelligence analysts and others are more forcefully challenging claims they believe to be false or questionable.

“There’s no question that people are less afraid to speak up after what happened in Iraq,” said one intelligence official. “There’s less of an inclination to let Cheney and Rumsfeld run free.” [We’ll see how successful they are.]

[Snip]

“That is outright manipulation of information to suggest a predetermined policy,” Murray [retired CIA station chief] said.

I’d like to point out the bogosity of how this “debate” is played out in the press and in the rightwing media (I know, I know, but there is still at least a token difference between the two). And that is framing this as the Bush administration versus The Left.

Since when are retired ex-CIA station chiefs part of The Left? Since when are generals at the Joint Chiefs level, who are fighting the use of nukes as forcefully as they can communists? They’re not, in any description of reality that would attract a rational consensus. And that is something to bear in mind:

The political crisis in America today is not betwen the Left and the Right, but between a numerically small but extremely dangerous, very wealthy, well-connected, and powerful cabal of extreme rightwing radicals and the rest of the country.

At the moment, the cabal’s wealth and connections are all but impervious, give or take an Abramoff or two. But their power, that’s a different story, that’s where you and I come in. We have to vote. Yes, it’s quite conceivable that Bush will ignore Congress and launch an invasion or nuclear assault on Iran despite a hostile Democratically controlled Congress that forbids it. But at least we can help elect that Congress and, if he ignores their wishes, make the point even more explicit to the unconvinced that we are no longer living in anything remotely resembling a working democracy.

Hullabaloo Reads Carnegie

by tristero

Following up on a previous post, I counted more than 10 people willing to read Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions by Iranian author Shahram Chubin. Unless I missed them, none of our prolifically commenting rightwing colleagues signed up. I will take their failure to participate as a sign of their utter lack of serious interest in views that contradict their own fantasies.* We are talking 244 pages here, not Atlas Shrugged, fer crissakes.

So I have ordered the book. When it arrives, I’ll suggest a time period in which to finish each chapter or section which I think is reasonable, given that all of us are busy, and a time at to discuss the section. I’ll also try to reach Shahram Chubin or someone else at Carnegie to see about answering questions we have.

I do hope that all of you who agreed will follow through and order the book, primarily because I think it will help all of us understand the situation in Iran a little better, as most people whatever their politics agree it is a very serious one. As mentioned, Carnegie has done excellent work in the past and although I don’t know Chubin’s work, I think the fact that Carnegie chose to publish it means we’ll find it a very helpful place to focus our attempts to understand some of what’s going on with Iran.

One more thing. Here’s the link to Cirincione on Fresh Air.

*The common rightwing retort to refusing to look at the facts of a situation is something like, “Hey buddy, you may have time to sip a latte and read a book, but I gotta work for a living, loser.” To which one can only reply, I gotta work for a living, too but I also happen to be an American citizen. It is an obligation of each and every American to stay informed on important issues facing our country. so we can vote responsibly for our representatives. Furthermore, I don’t drink lattes. Have t’watch the cholesterol, y’know. I prefer expresso or coffee American style, brewed dark, with a little 2% in it, no sugar, although what my preference in caffeinated beverages has to do with my politics or authenticity as an American is a little obscure to me.

Charles Krauthammer Gets It

by tristero

Exactly right:

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

If ever there was an argument for voting against Republicans and other rightwing lunatics, this is it. We should all take this to heart.

Oh…But wait a minute…Did I possibly misread this? Hmmm…Maybe he’s not talking about Bush. Could he mean Iran? Here’s the next sentence:

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age.

Oh, now I get it. He’s using “the mullahs” metaphorically, meaning the “top banannas” in the government, meaning “the White House.” Seriously, who else could Krauthammer be referring to? After all, since the US is the only country actually to use nuclear weapons, it’s surely “infinitely more likely” to use them again than a country that doesn’t have them and which experts believe is 10 years away from getting them.

ht, The Anonymous Liberal

“You’re Looking Beautiful Today, Dave”

by digby

Here is Bush getting pissed off at David Gregory for suggesting that North Korea or other countries might adopt Bush’s new way of dealing with the Geneva Conventions — “interpret” them however it suits them and change them at will. Bush seems to think that would be just great.

Dave? He’s back!

QUESTION: Sorry, I’ve got to get disentangled.

BUSH: Would you like me to go to somebody else, here, till you get…

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Sorry.

BUSH: Well, take your time, please.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: I really apologize for that. Anyway…

BUSH: I must say, having gone through those gyrations, you’re looking beautiful today, Dave.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

Mr. President, critics of your proposed bill on interrogation rules say there’s another important test. These critics include John McCain, who you’ve mentioned several times this morning.

And that test is this: If a CIA officer, paramilitary or special operations soldier from the United States were captured in Iran or North Korea and they were roughed up and those governments said, “Well, they were interrogated in accordance with our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions,” and then they were put on trial and they were convicted based on secret evidence that they were not able to see, how would you react to that as commander in chief?

BUSH: My reaction is, is that if the nations such as those you name adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act, the world would be better. That’s my reaction.

We’re trying to clarify law. We’re trying to set high standards, not ambiguous standards.

And let me just repeat: We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is, if our professionals don’t have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward.

You cannot ask a young intelligence officer to violate the law. And they’re not going to. They — let me finish please — they will not violate the law.

You can ask this question all you want, but the bottom line is — and the American people have got to understand this — that this program won’t go forward if there’s vague standards applied like those in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. It’s just not going to go forward.

You can’t ask a young professional on the front line of protecting this country to violate law.

Now, I know they say they’re not going to prosecute them. Think about that, you know. “Go ahead and violate it, we won’t prosecute you.” These people aren’t going to do that.

Now, we can justify anything you want and bring up this example or that example. I’m just telling you the bottom line. And that’s why this debate is important and it’s a vital debate.

Now, perhaps, some in Congress don’t think the program is important. That’s fine. I don’t know if they do or don’t.

I think it’s vital and I have the obligation to make sure that our professionals who I would ask to go conduct interrogations to find out what might be happening or who might be coming to this country — I got to give them the tools they need, and that is clear law.

QUESTION: This is an important point, and I think it…

BUSH: The point I just made is the most important point, and that is the program is not going forward.

You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country. The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law.

And the best way to provide clarity in the law is to make sure the Detainee Treatment Act is the crux of the law. That’s how we define Common Article 3. And it sets a good standard for the countries that you just talked about.

Next man?

QUESTION: But wait a second. I think this is an important point.

BUSH: I know you think it’s an important point.

QUESTION: But, sir, with respect, if other countries interpret the Geneva Conventions as they see fit, as they see fit, you’re saying that you’d be OK with that?

BUSH: I am saying that I would hope that they would adopt the same standards we adopt; and that by clarifying Article 3 we make it stronger, we make it clearer, we make it definite.

And I will tell you again, you can ask every hypothetical you want, but the American people have got to know the facts.

And the bottom line is simple: If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules — if they do not do that, the program’s not going forward.

QUESTION: This will not endanger U.S. troops in your…

BUSH: Next man?

QUESTION: This will not endanger…

BUSH: David, next man please. Thank you.

He was angry and petulant throughout this press conference but especially in that exchange. He seemed to be truly pissed at McCain et al.

However, I must say that I’m so jaded about those so-called independent Republicans, particularly Huckelberry and McCain, that I have a strong feeling that this is some sort of Kabuki. Huck, especially, has never once failed to validate my belief that he is a phony little prick, pretending to be a moderating influence when he’s really just an egomaniac. (Besides, if there’s one member of congress who is subject to Rovemail, it’s him. I just don’t see him bucking the president on something that’s important to him.)

I think Bush is making a lot of noise about this right now because that’s how he hopes to keep the House on track to pass his bill. If that happens then he’s in a much stronger position to negotiate with the Senate — and I think they know that too. The compromise may already be being worked out. It may even be the case that they’ve decided to have the president “lose” so that a few Republicans can be seen as voting against him. It’s the smart play although I don’t know if Bush’s ego will allow him to do something like that.

I don’t believe for a minute that the CIA interrogators are going to feel constrained from torture of these “high value” secret prisoners because of the Geneva Conventions. They never have before and if they do feel constrained they’ll just “render” the prisoner to the prisoner’s home country for a little homegrown waterboarding. (For all we know they have bin Laden in thumbscrews as we speak.) The underlying issue is the congress legalizing the president’s prerogative to change the definition of the Geneva Conventions.

Marty Lederman, expounding on that, also points out that the major issue was always with the military torture and humiliation regime in the battlefield and Guantanamo and there seems to have been some “clarification” of that already. Therefore, there is no good reason to even be having this debate and many, many excellent reasons not to.

Powell is right about one thing, “the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” Actually it isn’t beginning to doubt it, it sees us as downright immoral. If you want to talk about rhetoric that’s dangerous to the war effort, the president of the United States loudly and angrily proclaiming that he expects the congress to legalize this thing — and unilaterally “redefine” the Geneva Conventions”in the process would qualify. People around the world tend to see that as somewhat arrogant.

There is a major reason why Bush is trying to work the country into a frenzy of inchoate fear right now, even beyond the necessities of the upcoming election. The only way he can justify his torture regime and destruction of the Bill of Rights is to create a boogeyman so heinous that the rules that stood this country in good stead throughout its history and even in fighting WWII and the Cold War are no longer adequate. In fact, this enemy must be frightening beyond all previous human experienc so that we will have no choice but to loosen up other taboos as well.

There’s one nation of Iran and, you know, a bunch of nations like us trying to, kind of, head in the same direction. And my concern is that, you know, they’ll stall; they’ll try to wait us out.

So part of my objective in New York [at next week’s UN address] is to remind people that’s stalling shouldn’t be allowed. In other words, we need to move the process. And they need to understand we’re firm in our commitment and that if they try to drag their feet or, you know, get us to look the other way, that we won’t do that; that we’re firmly committed in our desire to send a common signal to the Iranian regime.

I hesitate to mention what product he’s in such a hurry to roll out this time.

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Saddamites On The Rise

by digby

I noticed that after Bush belligerantly defended torture, he went on to describe Iraq as not being in a civil war using the term “Saddamist” to describe the people who are causing the trouble.

He’s been listening to Joe Lieberman and The Committee For Present Danger whose primary advice recently was to change the way we talk about the Iraq war to characterize it as a resurgent Saddam fedayeen trying to recapture the government.

This was their number one recommendation in its recent Iraq paper:

* Define the threat to stability to include Saddam Fedayeen insurgents, in addition to al-Qaeda in Iraq and its jihadi allies:

Keep your ears open for this latest slogan. They’re rolling out a new marketing campaign.

And, yes, the craziest grown-ups are still in charge.

*** Also, it seems that Rove has decided that having Bush blabbering incessantly on TV will result in their keeping the congress in the fall. Think it’ll work?

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Carnegie Endowment On Iran

by tristero

One of the most remarkable things about that most remarkable of periods in recent American history, 2002/2003, was that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published paper after paper, sat for interview after interview, held seminar after seminar, about the dangers of pre-emptive unilateralism (PU) in general and conquering Iraq in particular – and nobody listened despite the fact that they got it nearly exactly right.

You think it might be a good idea to listen to them now, given their track record? I mean, sure, Kenneth Pollack is better connected to Big Media, and Bill Kristol has a disarmingly goofy smile, but they were after all wrong, and lots of people died because of their little oops moment. Maybe they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs in the firmament when it comes to foreign policy. And maybe, just maybe, one might pay attention to what Carnegie’s saying right now about Iran. So….

Here’s a book they publish – and lo and behold, it’s by an Iranian – entitled Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions and it looks pretty good. Shall we read it, folks? And that includes our friends on the right who comment here. If 10 of you, including the righties, pledge to read it (and be honest), I’ll contact the Endowment and see if I can get the author or some other spokesperson to answer our questions. (BTW, I’m sure there are plenty of other books to read, but this one is short and current and unusual so feel free to suggest additional reading for people, but I want to stick with this one for a blogread.)

Meanwhile, here’s some commentary I culled from the Carnegie website:

From a paper entitled Crisis in the Middle East, George Perkovich writes:

Iranian leaders risk over-reaching. If Hizbollah is perceived to lose badly (a big if), and Iran cannot come to its rescue, then Iran’s power would be diminished and the wisdom of confronting it, including on the nuclear issue, would be more apparent. And if Sunnis broadly conclude that Hizbollah and its Shiite Iranian patrons, despite the excitement generated by their anti-Israel words and deeds, actually harm Sunni interests, then resistance to Iran’s regional ambitions may become mobilized.

In other words, it will be very difficult to achieve a major defeat of Hezbollah. Indeed, one troubling result of the recent war in South Lebanon is the possibility of a stronger Sunni/Shi’a alliance against Israel. Such an alliance would enhance Iran’s standing in the region. Therefore, one way to resist this is to counterbalance ” the excitement generated by their [Hezbollah’s] anti-Israel words and deeds” by highlighting how much Iran’s ambitions will impinge Sunni interests.

Of course, we could just take the neocons’ advice and just kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. No Shi’a, no Sunni, no problem. And I can also cure your dandruff by inviting Dick Cheney to join us for our next hunting trip. No head, no dandruff, done. Finis.

Now, here’s Joseph Cirincione:

It’s not just that the officials are saying that everything is still on the table; you can understand officials saying that. It’s beyond that. It’s very reminiscent of the coordinated campaign that we saw before the Iraq war. You have cabinet officials, the president, and the vice president giving major speeches on the subject. They’re labeling Iran the central or main threat. They try to link Iran to the war on terror, even to 9/11 itself, by talking about Iran as the central banker for terrorism, or the main state sponsor for terrorism. Officials have leaked information to the press just in the last couple of weeks that claims that the Iranian nuclear program is further advanced than it really is.

And there seems to be a concerted effort to convey this threat as imminent, without using that word, and that action will soon have to be taken. And, finally, you hear a drumbeat from both the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby arguing for military action on Iran. None of this is conclusive in and of itself, but together they really present a very ominous picture. And it is now my working hypothesis that at least some members of the administration, including the vice president of the United States, have made up their mind that the preferred option is to strike Iran and that a military strike will destabilize the regime and contribute to their longtime goal of overthrowing the government of Iran.

You really can’t, I guess, comment on how strong the regime in power is in Iran, but it seems like a risky plan.

I believe a military strike would consolidate the hold of the Islamic government, not loosen it. If you want to keep President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad in power for the next five years, launch a strike on an Iranian facility. There is no doubt in my mind that the Iranian people would rally around the government and would become convinced that what the government has been telling them is true, that the main threat to the Iranian people comes from the United States or the U.S.-Israeli alliance. I can’t think of any more counterproductive move if you have the goal of enabling the Iranian people to choose their own government, than to launch a military strike against Iran now.

What is your analysis of Iran’s nuclear progress so far?

This is the key point. This is where I believe this whole debate should go over the next six months. The Iranian threat is a serious one but it is not an imminent one. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon; it is not going to get a nuclear weapon this year or even this decade. The Iranians are at least ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium either for fuel rods or a nuclear weapon.

You’re sure about that?

Everything we’ve seen indicates that that is in fact the case, and this is the consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence agencies. We have a national intelligence estimate that was done last year and discussed in the Washington Post in August 2005 that reached the conclusion that Iran is five to ten years away. We’ve had testimony this year from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, which confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Iran will not be able to construct a bomb until “sometime in the middle of the next decade.”

Now, what we need to do is declassify that intelligence estimate. Let’s get all the facts out on the table. Let’s examine this evidence in public, as to what Iran’s capabilities are and what various estimates are as to the nuclear timeline. If those intelligence estimates are wrong let’s find out why.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me.

By the way, Cirincione was recently interviewed on Fresh Air about Iran. I couldn’t find the link but if anyone has it, please post in comments.

Running Mates?

by poputonian

Ok – here’s an opening (from today’s WaPo editorial):

A Defining Moment for America
The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture

… and stepping forward to fill the breach:

“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” former general and secretary of state Colin L. Powell wrote to McCain.

McCain/Powell in ’08?

I don’t know, but I think Karl Rove is losing his grip on the White House.

Who’s Appeasing Now?

by digby

This is unbelievable. We are facing a threat that dwarfs the threat of fascism, but Bush doesn’t think it’s important to remove Hitler. From ThinkProgress:

HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.

Yesterday, the WaPo reported it this way:

On another topic, Bush rejected sending more troops to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas to find Osama bin Laden. “One hundred thousand troops there in Pakistan is not the answer. It’s someone saying ‘Guess what’ and then the kinetic action begins,” he said, meaning an informer disclosing bin Laden’s location.

Fred’s president is waging a war like no other, on an enemy that is allegeldy more dangerous than anything the world has ever known, who is plotting to take over the United States of America and end western civililzation as we know it. Yet, he’s sitting around waiting for a tip from some sheep-herder in Waziristan to tell him where the leader of this dastardly plot is so that he can send someone in to catch him? Whah?

And that whole definition of a war on terror sounds shockingly like that wussified Democrat law enforcement and intelligence crap, doesn’t it? Here I thought we were going to “fight” this war like manly men with big brass bombs, take it to the terrists and all that. Guess not. We’re taking our lead from the Euro-weenies, instead.

Bush cannot be allowed to demagogue this thing into some sort of War of the Worlds alien invasion and then say he’s waiting around for some goatherd to drop a dime on bin Laden. Democrats need to wrap this BS around every Republican candidate’s neck and set it on fire.

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Crusader Codpiece

by digby

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation’s struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as “a confrontation between good and evil.”

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious people “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,” Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. “There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”

I love this. He and his administation want to try people for treason for leaking to the papers about his illegal spying on US citizens and then he blurts out some babble that validates every stupid thing bin Laden preaches to his deluded followers. He might as well just call it a Christian Crusade and get it over with. He just framed his War On Terror in religious terms, which is very, very dumb.

Perhaps everyone has forgotten, what with all the idiotic hyperbole about “The Ideological Struggle of the 21st century” but al Qaeda framed this jihad from the very beginning as being a religous war against the “Jews and Crusaders.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s very smart for the president of the United States to keep helping him make that case. It’s the basis for bin Laden’s demagogic appeal.

Meanwhile, Bush goes on and on about how we can’t leave Iraq because bin Laden will think we’re chicken and … I don’t know … be “emboldened.” This is based upon bin Laden trash talk, which really seems to make these wingnuts so mad they just lose their wits:

“We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you’re doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you’ll get out of us is talk,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.

Viciously describing things in public will not stand! For a superpower, we sure are easily provoked by religious fanatics calling us chicken if we leave Iraq or fail to respond militarily to some Iranian nutcases ramblings.

Meanwhile the president of the United States is holding court with a bunch of his sycophants characterizing the U.S. as being in the midst of a Christian crusade. Oy.

Why is it they do absolutely everything bass-askwards? It’s a bad idea to base US policy on trash talk. We should not be making national security decisions on whether bin Laden will “think” we are weak. We are the United States of America and we are too big and powerful to be playing games like this.

On the other hand, it makes no sense to provide bin Laden and his ilk with ready made recruiting tools and propaganda for no good reason either. It is irresponsible for Bush to be characterizing this “war” in religious terms when it isn’t true, it’s purely for his own political purposes and it gives the terrorists ammunition.

The administration and its allies succumb to bin Laden’s taunts when it comes to important matters of policy and then turn around and overtly help bin Laden recruit terrorists with ridiculous rhetoric about Great Awakenings and the war on terror. (Meanwhile, he’s got his inane undersecretary of state for public diplomacy running around the mid-east talking about her experiences being a suburban soccer mom.)

If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Osama bin Laden had George W. Bush wrapped around his little finger.

*** Following up on tristero’s posts below about Bush’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons — a fear that I share, since, for all the reasons tristero outlines, it’s hard to see how the GOP’s fear mongering can lead to anything else — I recall a post I wrote some months back on the subject of taboo’s. It ended with this quote from Gene Lyons:

Once again Bush has denied hostile intent, just as he did for many months after secretly ordering the Pentagon to draft detailed war plans against Iraq. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that all systems are go at the White House, including possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. He hints that the neo-conservative ideologues around Dick Cheney have deluded themselves that bombing Iran would lead to internal rebellion and the overthrow of the nation’s Islamic regime.

Yeah, sure it would. Ever noticed how much the neo-cons’ ignorance of basic human psychology rivals only Osama bin Laden’s ?

yep.

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